Ask the Spike

Re Fashion

I think we all agree, don’t we, that we all have too many bloody clothes. Too many that we don’t wear, too many that we pass our hands over in the morning as we’re getting dressed, thinking “No… no – not that.”

That was the fuel behind the whole capsule rant on here – why not open your wardrobe and feel spoiled for choice, rather than thinking “OMG, what an utter car crash. I. Have. Got. Nothing. To. Wear.”

But, meanwhile, an entire industry has sprung up around the clothes that we don’t or can’t wear. We are at clothing crisis point and those slightly at fault (i.e. clothing stores with a high turnover of stuff… looking at you H&M) have in-store recycle and reuse points. Alternatively you can donate to a charity shop.

Or, now, send to Re Fashion, an online-donation portal that promises to donate three times more to charity than charity shops. Their initial charity partner will be Breast Cancer Care.

Re Fashion is also, itself, a shop – (or will be soon when they’ve got enough lovely stuff) – selling all the quality donations at low prices. Anything you donate that doesn’t make the grade gets recycled, not binned to landfill.

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Comments

What a super idea. I have some unworn clothes from my pre-capsule (aka pre-finding The Spike) days and am also looking forward to seeing what they have to sell once they have set it all up – clothes and charity has to be a winner.

My old friend Tanya from Hush is working with them so that’s where my trust is coming from; but also there are a billion hoops charitable organisations like this have to jump through – if they don’t give at least a 30% return as promised they can be prosecuted under the Charities Act 2011, (don’t ask me how I know this), and I doubt that Breast Cancer Care would let their name be associated with someone they thought would get into that kind of trouble. But I applaud your caution.

Bag ordered. On the “how did you hear about us” section you can’t select or enter The Spike in an “other” section. Not sure if it’s important to you for this one but thought i’d mention. It’s a great idea and I constantly have a charity clothes bag on the go (my bad) so thanks for flagging it.

Do you think they will take rags? I have a bag of fabric offcuts and holey socks and jumpers (absolutely beyond repair: even I won’t darn a previous darn!) etc, and none of my local charity shops will take rag any more … Am horrified that they all have so many donations that they happily refuse stuff.

Retailer offers incentive to send back worn and unwanted items instead of binning them

Rebecca Smithers Consumer affairs correspondent

Mon 18 Jun 2018 01.00 EDT

This article is over 3 months old

John Lewis is to buy back worn and unwanted clothing from its customers – including underwear and old socks – in a UK industry first that aims to reduce the 300,000 tonnes of fashion waste going into landfill each year.

Customers can arrange through an app to have any unwanted clothing that they bought from John Lewis collected from their home, and they will be paid for each item regardless of its condition.

The pilot scheme has been developed with Stuffstr, a social enterprise.

“We already take back used sofas, beds and large electrical items such as washing machines and either donate them to charity or reuse and recycle parts and want to offer a service for fashion products,” said Martyn White, the retailer’s sustainability manager.

He said the average UK household owned about £4,000 worth of clothes, almost a third of which had not been worn for at least a year, mostly because items no longer fitted.

Customers using the app can choose what they want to sell and are shown the amount they can receive for them. Once a customer has at least £50 worth of clothing to sell, a courier will collect the products. The customer is then emailed a John Lewis e-gift card for the value of the items sold.

Items bought back are either resold – though not in John Lewis stores – mended for resale or recycled into new products.

Last year John Lewis took back for “upcycling” more than 27,000 electrical products and about 2,000 used sofas, and recycled materials from 55,000 mattresses.

John Atcheson, the chief executive of Stuffstr, said: “Every item has value, even old socks, and we want to make it as simple as possible for customers to benefit from their unwanted clothes.”

The pilot is the first clothing recycling scheme on the high street to use technology in a way that provides its users a financial incentive. Marks & Spencer’s “schwopping” scheme, launched in 2012, has prevented more than 7.7m items of clothing from being thrown away, while brands including H&M and Zara have stepped up in-store recycling initiatives.

A report on the scale of waste generated by the fashion industry, published last November by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, put the annual cost to the UK economy of landfilling clothing and household textiles at about £82m.

Francois Souchet, of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said: “Every second the equivalent of one truck full of clothes is sent to landfill or incineration. Creating a circular economy for fashion requires unprecedented levels of collaboration.”